Tarantism

Tarantism is a form of hysteric behaviour, popularly believed to result from the bite of a kind of wolf spider called a "tarantula" (Lycosa tarantula). (These spiders are different from the broad class of spiders called "Tarantulas".) A better candidate (as the bite of Lycosa tarantula is not in fact capable of producing significant ill effects), is Latrodectus tredecimguttatus, commonly known as the Mediterranean black widow or steppe spider, although no link between such bites and the behaviour of tarantism has ever been demonstrated.[1] However, the term historically is used to refer to a dancing mania characteristic of Southern Italy and which likely had little to do with spider bites.

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It was originally described in the 11th century.[2] The condition was common in southern Italy during the 16th and 17th centuries. There were strong suggestions that there is no organic cause for the heightened excitability and restlessness that gripped the victims. The stated belief of the time was that victims needed to engage in frenzied dancing to prevent death from tarantism. Supposedly a particular kind of dance, called the tarantella, evolved from this therapy. A prime location for such outbursts was the church at Galatina, particularly at the time of the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul on 29th June.[3] "The dancing is placed under the sign of Saint Paul, whose chapel serves as a "theater" for the tarantulees' public meetings. The spider seems constantly interchangeable with Saint Paul; the female tarantulees dress as "brides of Saint Paul".[4]

As a climax, "the tarantulees, after having danced for a long time, meet together in the chapel of Saint Paul and communally attain the paroxysm of their trance, ... "... the general and desperate agitation was dominated by the stylized cry of the tarantulees, the 'crisis cry', an ahiii uttered with various modulations".[5]

Francesco Cancellieri, in his exhaustive treatise on Tarantism, takes note of semi-scientific, literary, and popular observations, both recent and ancient, giving each similar weight.[6] He notes a report that in August of 1693, a doctor in Naples had himself been bitten by two tarantulas with six witnesses and a notary, but did not suffer the dancing illness. Cancellieri in part attributes this illness not only to the spiders but to the locale, since Tarantism was mainly seen in Abruzzo, Puglia, and Calabria. He states:

When one is in the hold of this ill-wished beast, one has a hundred different feelings at a time. One cries, dances, vomits, trembles, laugh, pales, cries, faints, and one will suffer great pain, and finally after a few days, if unaided, you die. Sweat and antidotes relieve the sick, but the sovereign and the only remedy is Music.[7]

He goes on to describe some specific observations of the malady, typically afflicting peasants, alone or in groups. The malady typically affected peasants on hot summer days, causing indolence. Then he describes how only treatment through dancing music could restore them to vitality; for example:

The poor peasant (was) oppressed with difficult breathing, and we observed also that the face and hands had started to be become black. And 'cause his illness was known to all, a guitar was brought, whose harmony immediately that he was understood, began first moving in the feet, legs shortly afterwards. He stood on his knees. Soon after an interval he arose swaying. Finally, in the space of a quarter of an hour he was leaping, nearly three palms from the ground. Sighed, but with such great impetus great, that it terrorized bystanders, and before an hour, the black was gone from his hands and face, and he regained his native color.[8]

Although the popular belief persists that tarantism results from a spider bite, it remains scientifically unsubstantiated. Donaldson, Cavanagh, and Rankin (1997)[10] conclude that the actual cause or causes of tarantism remain unknown.

Anon (1968). Tarantism: St. Paul and the Spider, in Essays and Reviews form the Times Literary Supplement. London: Oxford University Press, pp.172-183. Originally published in the Times Literary Supplement, 27 April 1967.